SEATTLE (AP) - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is honoring an agency in India with the world's largest prize for international health. The $1 million Gates Award for Global Health goes to the Aravind Eye Care System for preventing and curing blindness in India's poorest communities.

Cataracts account for more than half the cases of blindness in India. In the past year, Aravind has provided outpatient care to nearly two and a half million people and has performed more than 280,000 surgeries.

The Gates Foundation gives Aravind partial credit for reducing the estimated number of blind people in India from nearly 9 million in 1990 to under 7 million in 2002.

The Gates Foundation award will be presented on May 29 at the Global Health Council' conference in Washington, D.C.